“Advocates and policymakers are proposing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies for public charging stations and vehicle rebates, seemingly without consideration that New Jersey already has the 9th highest electricity rates in the nation,” NJBIA’s Ray Cantor argues in an op-ed that ran on NJ.com Saturday.
While NJBIA supports sensible legislation that promote the use of electric vehicles, including building public charging stations, it opposes the current policy. Unfortunately, many of New Jersey’s lawmakers want to commit to electric vehicles without any sense of consumer demand and little if any discussion about cost.
As Cantor points out, most electric vehicle owners charge them either at home or at work, not public charging stations. To the degree that there is a demand, it’s for the high-speed charging stations that EV owners need to take a long trip. Obviously, it’s impractical to sit at a rest stop for three hours while your electric car “fuels up.”
Finally, NJBIA also objects to forcing residents and businesses to subsidize the project. Cantor points out that New Jersey electricity customers already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the nation, in part because government-imposed costs account for more than one-fourth of the typical electric bill in New Jersey.
